Here are 17 of the craziest stories, which made us contemplate deleting our social media accounts.

1.The Catfish Who Introduced Her to His Parents

Met a guy online, we dated for over a year. I met his parents, slept in his apartment, met his friends, then he randomly disappeared. I paid $9.95 to a sketchy Internet look up service and found out he was married with two children. And he was 10 years older than he told me. And he gave me a fake last name. Pow, right in the kisser.

2.The Catfish Admitting to Catfishing

I actually catfished someone, but this was 15 years ago before it was a phenomenon. I was 15 and I went into a Britney Spears chat room. I met a guy from the Netherlands. I said I was 18 (as was he) and my name was Mandi (yes, with an "i"). I gave him my real number so we'd talk on the phone everyday — he'd call me. As catfish stories go, things got intense fast, there was talk of him visiting, so naturally, I did something dramatic. I pretended that Mandi got in a car accident and lost her memory. Things unraveled from there and I finally told him the truth. We tried to be friends, but it was too weird. A week later, he was dating someone else in the chat room.

Submitted by DeAnna Hall (Facebook)

3.The Super Dedicated Catfish

Elke Critchley

The real Elke's pictures used for a profile with the name "Rochelle."

Elke Critchley

I got this message one day from a boy who I went to school with, and he was like, "There's a chick down here on Tinder and Instagram that is using your photos and a few of my footy mates said they've been tuning her." I tried to search her but I was blocked and so were my two best friends and my family so I had to get a person from work to look her up. Anyway — ended up getting a heap of people to report her so then I thought she was gone. Then, randomly about a month or so after, this guy messages me on Facebook saying, "I am sorry for the random add but someone has been using your pictures — and we've been having a relationship over it." I was like, "What?!"

He was convinced that he wasn't being catfished because they would talk on the phone and she would send him several photos a day. But his friends kept telling him that he was. He told me he tried to meet up with her so many times, but last minute she would always bail. One excuse she had was that her boss was really sick and she was going to take him flowers. She then sent a picture of me holding flowers that I had uploaded MONTHS ago and had later deleted. Eventually, he got frustrated with the lack of meeting up and cut it off. She then just disappeared one day. I know she is still catfishing though, because to this day I've had two other guys tell me they were involved in an online relationship with her via Facebook chat and Instagram direct. Crazy!

Submitted by Elke Critchley, Facebook

4.The Catfish Who Catfishes for Her Job

I work for a repo company and I have a fake Facebook set up to lure people who have been hiding their cars from us out on dates. We make plans to meet up, and then when they arrive to meet up, I repo their cars. Hahaha. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

5.The Catfish Who Has No Vocal Chords

About two years ago, one of my girlfriends retweeted someone on Twitter and I fell in LOVE! He was so sexy! I called up my friend and asked her who he was and she said his name was Ken and that he was a really good friend of hers and that they hung out before. He sent me a DM on Twitter asking a me a question and then from that day on we spoke to each other every hour and every day.

I got to know Ken on every level — he told me he had a kid and that he was an accountant and that he was born and raised in Chicago. We hadn't spoken on the phone yet, all we ever did was text. I told my girl to call him on three-way and she's like, "Rachel he can't talk." I was shocked. She told me he was born without vocal chords. I was confused, but didn't stop talking to him. We even ended up having phone sex! How does one have phone sex without another voice on the opposite end of the phone? You text back your "oohs" and "ahhs."

Then one day I got a text from him saying, "There's an Instagram profile that's trying to slander me, if it follows you block them." But I got curious. I clicked on the profile and the bio said, "He is a figment of her imagination" with a picture of Ken and some random girl. Come to find out after intense research this "man" I was talking to turned out to be a WOMAN that pretended to be him for seven years! SEVEN YEARS!!!! After I found out all that information I never spoke to him/her ever again.

6.The Dorm Bros Playing a Joke

Some of the guys in my dorm hall decided to make a fake Facebook account with pictures of a random girl they found. She did the whole flirting thing for a while, and then disappeared for a month plus, nothing, just gone. Then, it was Christmas day and I got a message, "I hope my request isn't too much." Next thing I know, I had a relationship request. We had planned to meet up for lunch near campus when I was back in the area after break. After I got there, in walked the guys from the dorm. She never showed. Later, I got a message from her saying it was the cafe on the other side of town. After my friends started adding "her" on Facebook and asking about when she was gonna quit standing me up the fake profile she magically told me "She couldn't do this anymore" and disappeared.

Afterwards, I found the real girl who the pictures were actually of. One of my friends actually knew her too, ironically. She thought the whole thing was crazy but wanted to meet me anyway so I took her on a few dates. Win.

Submitted by Drew O'Connor (Facebook)

7.The Guy Who Didn't Realize Other People Use Reddit, Too

I was on some random site through an app/website last summer and I connected with a hot dude. We talked for a while and he would send me "suggestive" pictures. Not gonna lie, I liked it and we kept talking. I thought it sounded too good to be true so I did the "Catfish" thing and reverse Google imaged search and surprise, there were a few profiles with this guys picture. I did some more digging and found the original "suggestive" photos on a Reddit thread. It wasn't even that hard to find!! I then contacted the real guy in the pictures and he was freaked out by the whole thing. We ended up talking for a while and I was so happy I connected with the "real" guy. It worked out in the end.

8.The Catfish Who Raised Money for an Illness She Didn't Have

When I was in high school my younger sister heard of this girl through her friends on YouTube. Her name was Kairi and was seven years old and lived in Ireland. She had a terminal illness. We added her on Facebook and she had several pictures. We would Skype her (but she never had video on because the camera was broken) and she would tell us stories of things she did and talk about her siblings and soon after she would post pictures to Facebook and everything seemed to match up.

She had several people who appeared to know her in person and even family members commenting on the posts. She seemed 100% legit and my sisters and I dedicated our lives to raising awareness for this little girl. My sister and her Youtube friends constantly dedicated videos to her, and I spent hours Facebook messaging and on the phone with her thinking I was keeping her company while she was sitting in the hospital.

Before long, something started to feel fishy. My sisters friends launched a full on investigation and ended up finding out that it was a teenage girl using pictures from the Facebook of a girl named Megan who actually did have cancer. "Kairi" made up this story to get donations and gifts from people around the world. We couldn't believe how elaborate the story was, as she had created an entire extended family and network of friends on Facebook to go with this Kairi story. It was truly crazy.

9.The Catfish Targeting 1D Fans

I once thought I was best friends with Louis Tomlinson's younger sister. Someone claimed to be Fizzy (Felicitie) and we grew quite close, talking for hours every day. I told her everything. One day she said she'd hook me and my friends up with meet and greet tickets at the "Take Me Home" tour so we could finally meet. I told my friends about our friendship and the tickets and of course they all thought I was full of shit.

I confessed to "Fizzy" that I had a huge crush on Harry Styles. She then told me that she'd shown him a picture of me and that he thought I was attractive and definitely would date me if we ever were to meet.

A few weeks later my mum was watching an episode of Dr. Phil following catfishes and my naive, One Direction obsessed, 12-year-old self finally put the pieces together. I ended up asking someone who had a follow from Fizz on Twitter to inform her of the catfishing that was going on.

I actually ended up getting to direct message the REAL Fizzy on Twitter and I sent her the links to the multiple fake social media accounts. She thanked me afterwards.

10.The Catfish Who Catfished Her Best Friends

When I was in high school I got catfished by one of my best friends. I got a new phone and had to get all my numbers back. When I was checking to see who was who I got a random text from a number I didn't know. The number told me his name was Blake and he went to a different school. He told me he knew a girl from my school who happened to be one of my friends. She then verified him for me and told me she used to go to school with him. She said he was really nice.

We ended up texting constantly, and became really good friends. He would always tell me how pretty and beautiful I was and I eventually ended up developing a crush on him. Since my friend could vouch for his validity I never really questioned if this "relationship" was legitimate.

It turned out that I had actually been texting my friend all along, and my whole friend group was in on it. When I confronted her about why she did this and kept it up, her excuse was that she wanted to be able to compliment me and help boost my self confidence. What a great friend.

11.The Girl Who Just Wanted to Make Friends and Got Catfished Instead

I was about to be a freshman in high school, so I tried to prepare myself by adding people from my new school on MySpace. I added a bunch of my brothers friends and random other people. I had gone to a private middle school before this, so I had to go through all this trouble of adding random strangers in an effort to meet people. Anyway, one day I got a friend request from "Frank" a hot looking, emo guy who went to my new school. I was so excited! A hot guy adding me? Yasss! We started messaging every day and I finally asked for his number. I called him and his voice did not sound like his picture at all! It didn't match the picture but I went with it anyway. I told him I was about to start at the same school as him, and we were both very excited. But then, when school started he immediately deleted his account. Not long after, I got a message from a girl telling me that "Frank" was fake. I was so mad and embarrassed. Still have no idea who catfished me!

12.The Mother and Daughter Catfish Team

When I was 16 I moved to a pretty small town. I became close friends with M, a girl at school. After a while, she began mentioning her best guy friend, Blake. She showed me pictures and told me I should hang out with him. It was like she was trying to set us up. He was really cute, so I was excited. Blake and I started chatting on Facebook and AIM. We chatted for a month or so and he kept trying to meet up. He attended a private school less than ten miles away from my school but every time we planned something, a very detailed excuse came up.

M had two cell phones. I didn't find it strange at first because her parents were separated and had a volatile relationship so her parents tried to one up each other by getting her gifts. But I started to notice that she was so secretive about one of her phones that she would constantly hide it or take it with her everywhere she went. She would not leave it lying around.

One day I came over to her house after school and her room smelled like men's cologne. She told me I had just missed Blake. I started to feel weirdly suspicious, so I began researching. Blake had told me about the anniversary of his dad's tragic accident so I looked up the obituary for the day and year he said, I found nothing. I looked up the school registry and he wasn't a student. I also paid for a reverse phone number look up and found that the number had been linked to M's mother!!! They were in on it together.

When I confronted them, they denied everything. We stopped being friends immediately.

13.The Lady Who Was Catfished and Then Got Her Revenge

I met someone on Twitter unintentionally, and we started chatting via text daily. Next thing I know, we were speaking every day all day. He started to admit feelings for me so I tried to plan for us to meet. He would lead me to believe he was coming and then bail last minute. There was always an excuse. This went on for months. Then he started telling me he was diagnosed with cancer and began to undergo treatment. I started getting suspicious and asking questions and always got very weird answers. I knew I was being lied to. I got really mad and decided to drive out to his town. When "he" found out I was there looking for him, he admitted that HE was actually a SHE.

Consequently, as I was on my way out of town I drove by the gym that the man in the photos she had sent had clearly worked at (one of the many locations). I had a weird feeling and hunch and decided to go in. Sure enough, someone recognized his photo and the next thing I knew, me and the real man behind the photos were talking. I had explained to him that someone pretended to be him. We agreed to meet up at a later date. We did. We hooked up. It was awesome.

14.The Catfish Story That Never Really Had a Chance

I was set up with a very distant mutual friend who claimed to have no social media (he didn't want to "worry" about it for college admissions.) After talking for about two months, and canceling three different dates (excuses included a "car accident"), he finally disappeared off the face of the earth after claiming he "dropped his phone in the toilet and it turned on long enough to send the message." HAHA, what an excuse, right? It got to the point where I had full on conversations with the MTV Catfish Twitter account and almost paid for a reverse number search from the same program they use on the show. You know you're screwed when the official Catfish Twitter account mentions you — "BABE I'M SO SORRY YOURE GETTING CATFISHED..." and mentions Nev.

15.The Catfish Story That Will Give You Chills

When I was in my early twenties, I modeled, and a model named Hannah messaged me out of the blue to talk about some industry stuff she had questions on. We ended up becoming fast friends and had decided to do a double lingerie shoot one day and were going to meet this photographer named Mario to do it with.

Hannah never showed up. I did the lingerie shoot with the photographer and that was that. I repeatedly messaged her and never heard a word again. I worked with that photographer a few times after that but it was nothing out of the ordinary.

A year later I find out that Mario is in prison for impersonating a girl (Hannah), and shooting underage girls in nude shoots. I never ever would have thought he was actually the person pretending to be Hannah. I still feel lucky nothing too scary happened with him.

16.The Lady Who Catches the Catfish

I haven't been catfished personally, but long before the show when Facebook first became available to people without a .edu email address, a lot of guys at my high school "met" this girl named Amber. I did some Nev work of my own and quickly discovered "Amber" was fake. I then found the actual girl on MySpace, and figured out who was behind it. Ten years later, and in a different town, I had a stranger come up to me on the street in front of a bar and ask, "Do you know an Amber *****? I'm supposed to be meeting her here." He showed me her picture from Facebook and lo and behold, there she was. Apparently she's still at it. I just hope this guy watches MTV soon.

17.The Catfish Who Was Way Too Good to Be True

About six months ago I matched with a guy on Tinder who seemed a little too good to be true. (This was in NYC, where a hot, nice guy on Tinder is truly a unicorn). He messaged me and we talked for a few days. He said his name was George and he lived in Brooklyn. He would tell me about school (claimed he went to Hunter), and his family. I would mention meeting up and he never dismissed the idea, but always had an excuse why he couldn't.

Out of curiosity, I reverse Google image searched one of his pictures and found a match to a Tumblr blog that featured hot guys from around the world. It had a link to the REAL guy's Instagram. Turns out George is actually Bruno, a teenager from Brazil. Bruno has a very cute girlfriend.

George has milked the Instagram account for all it's worth. Even his Tinder moments are screenshots from the Instagram account belonging to the REAL guy. I never told him I found out he was fake, but he still messages me once a month or so to see how I am. Little does he know ...